Condemned to pain (From The Oxford Times)

Condemned to pain

6:20am Thursday 15th January 2009 in

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Sir – The animal rights lobby claim to be helping animals, but they forget one important group. That’s the people with health problems and disabilities who benefit directly from animal-based research.

Until recently I had a serious spinal condition, which left me in massive pain and hardly able to work.

Thanks to animal-based research I had an operation where bone was taken out of my pelvis and placed into my spine to reinforce it. The pain has now completely gone, I can work full-time, and have a social life.

The research underpining this operation could only have been done on animals. Test tubes and computers won’t let you work out how bones fuse together.

The animal rights lobby tell us that we should treat animals in the same way as humans. But if we do that, we’re condemning people with health problems and disabilities to pain, to isolation, to unemployment, and to massively reduced quality of life.

I want to see the best possible conditions for animals, and will be happy when we have alternatives that work. But until that day, we need to keep animal research legal.

Kevin Elliott, Oxford

Comments(3)

CatC says...
2:15am Sat 17 Jan 09

What Kevin Elliott has completely missed is that we have been experimenting on other species for around 2,000 years - yes two thousand years...

yet today people ARE STILL suffering with health problems and disabilities, pain, isolation, unemployment, and massively reduced quality of life.

We must stop squandering resources experimenting on completely different species and instead put those resources into scientific, human-relevant research and tailored medicines.

www.safermedicines.o
rg

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philg says...
7:30pm Sat 17 Jan 09

Well said Kevin. If it's a choice between an animal or two, or my family, my family comes first every time.

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CatC says...
3:14pm Sun 18 Jan 09

It isn't a choice between 'an animal or two' though -

moral aspect 1

Each year in the UK alone around 3 MILLION animals are used for experimentation, that's 3 million unique sentient individuals who, like humans, can feel pain and suffer.

moral aspect 2

Each year in the US alone around around 2 million humans need to be admitted to hospital, and around 100,000 humans are killed, by pharm drugs - is that ok?

Is it ok to harm and kill some humans for the intended medical benefit of other humans? What if one of those humans harmed or killed was a member of your family?

Scientific aspect

We've been experimenting on other species for around 2,0000 years so IF it was 'a choice between an animal or two' then clearly today no humans would still be suffering from cancer, MS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's etc etc etc....but of course they are.

In fact, each species is genetically different at the cellular and molecular levels - that's why we have different species! - those genetic differences make it impossible to scientifically/safel
y apply results from one species to ANY other species.

Further, tiny, tiny genetic differences between individuals of the SAME species mean that a drug which helps one individual can harm or even kill another individual -

this is why we must stop squandering resources expermenting on completely different species and put those resources into scientific, human-relevant research and tailored medicines.

Condemned to pain (From The Oxford Times)

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